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About the Book:

Book Title: The book that I chose for my independent novel is "The Gathering."

Publication date: This book was published in 2007.

Setting: It mainly takes place in Ireland and sort of changes its time periods here and there because it is all about past and present events, but it starts off in 1968.

Situation: Deceitful things occur at Anne's Grnadmother's house and she looks back through history to get more information


About the Author:

Bio: Anne Enright was born of October 11th, 1962. She is an Irish Booker Prize winner, whose themes are usually based around family relationships and love. She won an international scholarship to Lester B Pearson United World College of the Pacific in Victoria, British Colombia. She had received degrees in English and Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin. She began writing immediately when she had received a typewriter for her 21st birthday.

Other Major works: Anne Enright has also written many other books which include: "The Portable Virgin" (1991), "The Wig My Father Wore" (1995), "What Are You Like?" (2000), and "The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch" (2002).

Reputation: Anne Enright was not a very well known other until the release of "The Gathering" in 2007.


Characters and Conflict:

Characters:

  • The main character of the story is obviously Anne herself.
  • Next important character would be Liam.
  • Following Liam is Veronica.
  • The rest of the Hegarty family as well.
  • Finally it narrows down to a simple nun.

Conflict: The main conflict of the story is that Anne's brother Liam has committed suicide prior to the beginning of the book which is what sets off Anne to find the truth of some family "rumors" of secrets she has heard of.


Theme: Sometimes a true tragedy must occur before the truth of a family matter can be revealed.


Book Review:

The story “The Gathering,” by Anne Enright is a riveting novel written in the perspective of Anne as herself. In just the beginning of the story, it all starts out with the death of her brother Liam occurring just before the story begins. The story is sporadically placed back and forth between past and present events as Anne explores through memories and past events that have occurred to unveil the corruption and lies of her family. Something has happened at her Grandmother’s house which had been covered up for many years and Anne is attempting to find out just what this is. The book starts off a little bit slow aside from the fact that it begins on a death of a family member, but after about 25 pages or so it really grabs you in. I would suggest this book for anyone looking for simply a good novel with a little mysterious twist to it.


Style:

Anne Enright has a repetitive style of writing to really get the point across to her readers like shown in the quote, “There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick" (Enright 128).


She also ha a long style of syntax using hyphens and periods to drag out her thoughts if they need to stretch over a larger idea like when she says, “There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important... and it is just as you suspected - most of the stuff that you do is just stupid, really stupid, most of the stuff you do is just nagging and whining and picking up for people who are too lazy to love you" (Enright 175).